Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Quintet / Clarinet Quintet

BBC Award finalist 2008 - Best Chamber recording

'This wonderful Hyperion collection featuring the Nash Ensemble at its golden-toned and responsive best … Coleridge-Taylor's Op 10 emerges as a quite astonishingly mature achievement … Backed up by a blemish-free production from the Keener/Eadon team and attractively presented, this has to be one of the most engaging releases I've heard all year' (Editor's Choice Gramophone Dec 2007)

'Coleridge-Taylor is best-known, when he's remembered at all, for his Violin Concerto…but the Nash Ensemble offers us delightful chamber music from the 1890s, of which the Clarinet Quintet is the real find. Dvorak is often the muse; enthusiastically recommended for English romantics.' (BBC Music)

'Coleridge-Taylor's creative light would seem to be firmly in the ascendant … The Nash Ensemble has maintained such an astonishingly high level of interpretative and technical expertise down the years that it is easy to become complacent. Yet even by its standards this is an exceptional recording, with Ian Brown excelling hmself with playing of the utmost sensitivity and imagination. High honours also go to violinist Marianne Thorsen who plays the 13-minute Ballade with a radiant glow and passion which have one hanging onto her every note … Enhanced by one of the most natural-sounding recordings that even Andrew Keener and Simon Eadon have ever produced, this is a must for all lovers of late-Romantic chamber music' (International Record Review)

'This splendid disc of early chamber music goes a long way to explain [Coleridge-Taylor's] charisma. The PIano Quintet … is a superbly characterful wotk with an especially original finale. And the Clarinet Quintet … is so assured, so obviously indpendent of the obvious contemporary model (the Brahms), that the much-overused term 'masterpiece' may not, in this instance, overstate the case … The Nash Ensemble do these deeply attractive and enjoyable works proud (the two Quintets languished unplayed for the best part of a century, and this may be the premiere recording of Op 1) in affectionate performances that revel in Coleridge-Taylor's idiomatic and challenging writing. The recording is warem but texturally crystal-clear. Highly recommended' (BBC Music Magazine *****)

'[Piano Quintet in G minor]… Well-crafted, with piquant harmonies (the pianist, not incidentally, is the outstanding Ian Brown who brings added class to everything he touches) … The Clarinet Quintet in F sharp minor commands the listener's full attention. Richard Holsford, the eloquent soloist, is heard at his best in the beautiful second-movement Larghetto' (Classic FM Magazine *****)

'There is enough mastery here and in the later Ballade for violin and piano to make highly rewarding listening. The Nash Ensemble's performances, as one would expect, are devoted and full of insight' (Daily Telegraph)

In this delightful disc, chamber music rarities by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor are performed by The Nash Ensemble. The early Piano Quintet shows the precocious development of the young composer, already demonstrating the flair for melody and inexhaustible spontaneity that would become a hallmark of his later works. The astonishing Clarinet Quintet is a work of remarkable subtlety and sophistication, rhythmically exuberant and complex, and uses the ensemble in an integrated way that demonstrates the composer's utter mastery of the genre. This is music of deep sensibility that deserves to be better known.
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